Root-cause analysis (RCA)
Definition
A structured method for identifying the underlying systemic cause of a failure rather than its immediate trigger. Common techniques in incident review include five-whys, fishbone (Ishikawa) diagrams, and fault-tree analysis. The goal is to find the cause whose correction prevents recurrence, not the cause that was most visible during the incident.
Related terms
- Action item
- A specific, time-bound improvement task generated by a post-incident finding. An action item has a named owner, a target completion date, a...
- Blameless post-mortem
- A cultural approach to post-incident review, popularised in site reliability engineering, in which the analysis focuses on systemic and process failures rather...
- Lessons-learned register
- A persistent record, maintained by the security programme, that links each post-incident action item to the originating incident, tracks its status, and...
- Post-incident activity
- The NIST SP 800-61 label for the final phase of the incident response lifecycle. It encompasses evidence retention, lessons-learned meetings, and the...
- Timeline reconstruction
- The process of ordering digital events from multiple sources into a single chronological account. Requires normalising all timestamps to a common reference...
Explained in
- Post-Incident Review and Lessons LearnedA structured method for identifying the underlying systemic cause of a failure rather than its immediate trigger. Common techniques in incident review include...